suddenly doesn't see my hard drive

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Level 1

79 points

suddenly doesn't see my hard drive

I have been using a Western Digital external hd for my Time Machine back up. It has worked perfectly. I successfully made a back up at about 11am this morning.

Suddenly, this evening (about 8 hours later), my MacBook no longer shows it in the Finder and when I tried to force a back up it said the back up drive isn't connected. Yet, when I generate a system report from the Apple pull down menu, the drive is shown as being connected to the USB hub.

I have rebooted. no difference. Also change the USB port it is connected to and no difference.

Suggestions?

MacBook, macOS Sierra (10.12.6)

Posted on Mar 4, 2018 6:48 PM

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Answer 1

MikeLV Author

Level 1

79 points

Mar 5, 2018 9:57 AM in response to Allan Eckert

thank you for your reply. I just tried your suggestion. Unfortunately, the external drive does not show up in Disk Utility. And it doesn't appear as a connected device on the Finder screen.

The only place it appears is in the System Report as one of the items connected to the USB hub.

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Answer 2

Mar 5, 2018 12:45 PM in response to MikeLV

Try using the Terminal command

diskutil list. It will display every single drive and partition your Mac detects, including some that are hidden in Disk Utility (such as the built-in Recovery partition). If Terminal doesn’t display your external hard drive, chances are your hard drive has died.

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Answer 3

MikeLV Author

Level 1

79 points

Mar 5, 2018 1:54 PM in response to Encryptor5000

this is not good. It is still showing up in the System Report as "My Passport 07BB" But no where else. I tried your suggestion of diskutil list in Terminal and no sign of it there. I take this means I'm shopping for a new HD. Correct?

Considering it cost about $125, I'm not sure how worth while it is to invest in taking it to a repair facility. Any opinions?

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Answer 4

MikeLV Author

Level 1

79 points

Mar 6, 2018 12:48 PM in response to Eric Root

Thanks for your suggestion. I tried doing the terminal discutil list command someone else suggested. The drive doesn't show up in the list at all so I can't figure out what to enter for the discutil mount input. Am I missing something?